Google Glass ready to roll out to developers, but why not save $1,500 and build your own?

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Six months after their spectacular unveil, Google is about to send the first round of augmented reality Google Glass devices to developers. Developers will pay $1,500 for the privilege of receiving an early, prototype version of Google Glass, but the polished consumer version — due in 2014 — should be a lot cheaper.

As it stands, Google Glass is a browband — like a pair of spectacles, but without the lenses — with what basically amounts to small ARM computer running Android attached to the right side, by your temple, and a large battery behind your right ear. There’s all the usual hardware that you would find in an Android smartphone — a speaker (near your ear), a forward facing camera, gyroscope, accelerometer, compass, a couple of microphones, and WiFi and Bluetooth aerials — but instead of a large touchscreen, there’s a tiny display placed near your right eye.

In theory, if you’ve seen the original Glass promotional video (embedded below), Google’s goggles are meant to finally usher in the era of wearable computing. In reality, Google Glass is currently just like having an Android smartphone strapped to your head.

Whereas the promotional video promises augmented reality — maps, tags, or other markers superimposed on your current view — Google Glass doesn’t currently do any of that. Furthermore, the current incarnation of Google Glass doesn’t include a cellular radio — if you’re on the move, you’ll need to connect Google Glass to your smartphone via Bluetooth. Hopefully the first consumer-oriented version of Glass will have voice and head gesture controls, but for now interaction is through a touch panel by your temple.

Why is Google Glass currently so limited? In a word: batteries. Google is aiming for all-day battery life — a necessity for a wearable computer — but, reportedly, prototype devices only have a battery life of around six hours. The simple fact of the matter is that chemical batteries are heavy, and there’s a limit to how much weight you can add to a pair of spectacles before they become cumbersome. Google has also stated that it wants Glass to be a stylish accessory — tricky, if you have a bunch of battery packs hanging from your ears.

If Glass only lasts six hours in its current form, adding augmented reality functionality would simply kill the battery — probably in under an hour. Augmented reality is basically a mix of three things: Location detection (GPS, WiFi), head tracking (compass, gyro, accelerometer), and computer vision (processing input from the forward-facing camera to work out what you’re actually looking at). All three of these processes require a lot of power — especially computer vision. Short of a battery breakthrough — which is unlikely to happen — we probably won’t see true augmented reality Google Glass for some time.

How to make your own Google Glass

So, while wearable AR glasses are still just out of reach, it’s just a matter of time until the continued miniaturization of technology eventually makes it possible. It is significant that Google — not a hardware company by any stretch of the imagination — has managed to create Google Glass using mostly 0ff-the-shelf components. The commoditization of tiny, power-sipping components also means that Google isn’t the only company trying to bring augmented reality glasses to market: We’ve written about TTP, but companies like Microsoft and Sony have been working on head-up displays and VR goggles for decades. Vuzix, which produces a headset that’s very similar to Google Glass, has already won a contract to equip US Army soldiers with the M100 Smart Glasses.

Such commoditization also means that you could build your own Google Glass — which is exactly what Rod Furlan did. The device is rudimentary –it’s tethered to an off-board iPod Touch — but for the most part it seems to work a lot like Google Glass. Furlan is already working on a second version that’s powered by a Raspberry Pi [see: What is the Raspberry Pi?]. If you’re not afraid of heading to Ebay to source a few components, and a little bit of DIY work, it shouldn’t be too hard to replicate Furlan’s work.

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Why not allow Glass to plug into an Android device in your pocket and receive extra power and computing ability from said device? I can’t see such a heavy design working well for the end user – 6 hours is probably more than anyone could stand to keep it on anyway.

Jerry

I think it’ll be more likely that 8 hours a day is when people don’t wear them! It’ll be like going outside without your mobile phone, most people I know have heart attacks if they realize they left their phone inside!

philnolan3d

According to Google it weighs no more than regular glasses. Remember, it doesn’t have any actual glass, which is most of the weight for normal glasses.

The concept is really great but google need to make glasses lighter and fashionable to use them. We will see what kind of big changes we can see after google glasses.

philnolan3d

I wonder if they could put a battery behind both ears instead of one connected by a wire going across the “brow band”.

NotHereEither

I’m surprised other companies haven’t jumped on the idea as an interface to their products, such as Garmin, since having a suction-cup device stuck to your windshield is so 70’s.

Pizza Face

wad up guys? i got dis. IT so c000L

Eric Scoles

I love reading about this stuff, but without surgical and medical techniques that don’t yet exist, I’m not likely to ever be able to actually use it. Which is why I keep thinking of hacking together an audio version using a RasPi or something like it.

k2water

probably be smarter just to make a separate battery that you can just hook up to the device though a cord… like having the cord plug into the back of the earpiece and hold the battery in your pocket and have it be the size of your wallet… but what about people who need to wear glasses already, kinda a limited product since it only applies to people to lazy to pull out their phone, but doesn’t sell to those who would buy it because they already need glasses.

Gun Powder

Give it an easily replaceable battery, with a small onboard battery to keep it running while the main battery is being swapped out. No problem to keep a plastic case of main batteries in your pocket and charge them overnight..

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